Follow the Rabbit
by Nymbis
Summary: The use of tools, shields, and rabbit hutches. Zabuza and Haku.


**Follow the Rabbit**

He noticed it, but didn't pay much attention as he walked by the rodent, arms resting casually by his side as his gaze was trained straight ahead but peripherally evaluating the scenery, constantly on the lookout for threats.

Behind him, the kid was quiet as always, almost like being followed by a ghost, as he absently nibbled on a stick of dango that Zabuza had begrudgedly got him at the last village. His eyes were downcast, and naturally, became trained on the dying vermin on the side of the road.

It was a hare, its fur white due to the winter season, but stained an almost cheerful shade of pink. It wheezed, the back leg that was still connected to its body twitching as its black, beady little eyes stared at nothing. Probably run over by a cart or something, Zabuza hadn't cared enough in passing to put it out of its misery.

He kept walking, and his keen sense of hearing noticed that the tiny pitter patter of sandaled feet wasn't behind him. He turned, non existent eyebrows furrowed in annoyance as he glared back at the boy who kept staring at the rabbit.

"Move it!" He barked, and literally growled when all the kid did was carefully chew off the last bit of dango from the kebab it was on.

"Damn it kid, what's your-"

Zabuza was cut off as the boy, with only the slightest flick of the wrist, sent the sharpened end of the wood straight through the hare's neck. It twitched, shuddered, and went still.

The boy then faced Zabuza, bowed low, and with a quiet voice came, "My apologies."

Zabuza grunted, merely thrusting his thumb over his shoulder as an indicator to move, and as the kid walked onwards he only gave a passing last glance behind to the dead rabbit, gears turning in his head.

---

He woke up to the feel of someone's sandal digging into the spaces between his ribs, a not so gentle nudge. Quickly, he snapped to attention, sitting on his knees while blinking away sleep to stare up at Zabuza.

The man inelegantly dropped a wrapped bundle on the ground before Haku, jingling like chimes as it connected with the floor. Haku waited a few moments before he looked questioningly at him.

Zabuza's face remained expressionless while Haku's timid hands finally picked apart the folds of cloth.

Haku stared at what was before him in curiosity, about twenty rusty needles stared back. He inhaled.

"I…I don't know how to sew-"

"Don't be an idiot," Zabuza said coldly, "I expect you to train with these."

With that, he swerved on his heel and headed out almost as quickly as he entered. However, he managed one last piece of wisdom from over his shoulder.

"Don't let them grow dull, I hate replacing tools."

Haku stared at him as he left, then down at the needles, before he picked one up and smiled as it caught the light.

---

In two months he could hit every vital spot on the training dummies Zabuza had set up. Every time. Perfectly.

Zabuza refused to be impressed, taking every opportunity he could to critique his form, his follow through, his force. Haku only smiled, pleased at the attention, agreeable to the point of annoyance.

And one day when that happy look grew too taxing, Zabuza looked at his ridiculously earnest face, to the target where a neat line of senbon divided the dummy in a perfect vertical row, and back to Haku.

"Do it on a moving target, otherwise you're no use to me," he said coarsely, turning away from him, completely missing the fact that Haku's smile didn't waver at all.

---

Surprisingly, Zabuza had no complaints when the next day Haku brought home a rabbit in one hand and a scroll on acupuncture in the other.

---

Haku kept using the training dummies until he was positive that he could not only hit vital spots with next to no concentration, but could also miss them.

He killed the rabbit the second time he practiced with it, a needle going too far to the left, about half a centimeter. Instead of passing harmlessly over the kidney it went straight through it. And as Haku watched the life fade out of its eyes he sighed sadly and told himself that tools have sharp edges for a reason, and that he was no use to his precious person if he couldn't hone those sharp edges into a finer point.

Anyone could kill, to prove himself worthy he had to not only be able to kill, but to miss.

---

The next morning, when Haku went out to train, there was a battered old lobster cage next to the training targets. He could have wept. Instead, he decided to apply his newly developing skill towards rabbit catching.

---

Zabuza watched as Haku aimed senbon carefully at the rodents that were now damn near infesting his yard, the frown of annoyance lifting slightly when one of them froze and toppled over onto its side, the slightest shift in the breeze the only indicator of the needles now sticking out of its spine.

Haku quickly moved to stand over it, hands that were finally more experienced than timid pulling out the two senbon that protruded from the hare's back.

Haku hadn't lost a single senbon yet out of the set that he had pulled from a corpse's fingers, and Zabuza decided that Haku could keep his hobbies as long as those hobbies were of use to _him._

The rabbit shook its head loose, rear legs pushing off of the green grass as it ran, two pinpricks of pink the only sign of its near demise.

---

Zabuza couldn't sleep, not in long bursts anyways, years of paranoia and looking over his back had beaten that luxury out of him. He glared from his futon, eyes focusing on the opposite side of the room, and he could see the edges of the lobster cage- he supposed it was a hutch now, Haku had bent and cleaned the metal until it suited its purpose- from the sliver of light the cloth door provided.

Weary, and annoyed for a reason he couldn't articulate into words, he stood, bare feet carefully stepping around Haku who was slumbering peacefully on the floor next to his futon, having rolled off in his sleep as he was prone to do.

Without grace he pulled back the tarp door and hunched in front of the vermin that Haku had grown fond of, twitchy little noses and bleary eyes staring at nothing as they scuttled around in their confinement. Zabuza frowned.

He may have petulantly rattled the cage with his foot on the way back inside.

---

It had been a long mission.

Zabuza walked with a heavy gait into the makeshift house he and Haku were settled at, coated in blood from the assassination, his cleaver of a sword resting on his shoulder. He pulled back the tarp, noticing that Haku immediately stopped feeding his rabbits to turn and smile at him happily.

"The mission was successful?"

Zabuza grunted, resting his sword against the wall and making a beeline for the armchair, exhausted and cranky.

"Do you want me to prepare dinner?"

He grunted again.

"I can clean your sword for you. Blood is bad for a weapon-"

Zabuza silenced him with a glare, and Haku knew to fall quiet, going back to being preoccupied with his hares.

The Demon of the Mist exhaled slowly, a hand tugging off the bindings around his mouth as he leaned back, comforted by the small relief of rest. He felt his eyelids lower, but the sound of Haku messing with the cage he kept the vermin in stopped him from sleep.

"Now what?" He muttered, trying to recline peacefully on the well worn chair.

"One of the rabbits is missing…" Haku muttered, recounting the occupants of the hutch.

"It's dead. I summoned it for a replacement jutsu."

Haku's mouth fell into a slight frown. The conversation died after that, and for the rest of the night Zabuza chose to ignore the fact that the only way to describe Haku's facial expression was a mixture between crestfallen and relieved.

---

A few months from then, an idiotic little brat would throw a shuriken at him while he was on a very different assassination mission, and without thinking, Zabuza would pull the same trick.

The white rabbit wasn't meant to be a calling card, and it wasn't meant to start a game of bait and switch, but Zabuza, in his foolishness, failed to consider that not all tools should be used as shields. That was a lesson he would have to learn later, as somewhere between blowing his cover and realizing that his opponent was none other than The Copy Ninja himself, he was too preoccupied to watch as the white rabbit released itself from the Konoha genin's arms.

The hare hopped away from the clearing and into the relative safety of the trees, while in the distance a pair of eyes followed it from behind a mask.


End file.
